Airbus Offers Poland Joint Ventures, No Urgency In Share Stake

A
man makes a phone call next to the logo of Airbus Group during
the e-Aircraft Day at the Bordeaux Merignac
airportThomson
Reuters

By Wiktor Szary

KIELCE Poland (Reuters) - Airbus Group is interested in setting
up joint ventures to support the Polish defense industry but has
downplayed the question of Warsaw taking a direct shareholding in
the European aerospace group.

In December, the Polish government said it would consider buying
a stake in Airbus Group, then known as EADS. Polish media have
said the east European country is interested in taking a 1-2
percent stake in Toulouse, France-based Airbus Group.

Talk of integration expanded in July when the head of the
company's helicopters division told Reuters that Poland could
become Airbus's fifth core nation alongside Britain, France,
Germany and Spain, in a partnership designed in part to support
its bid for a military helicopter contract.

"The invitation was to join the Airbus Group but not immediately
with some stake in it. The story of (Poland's) stake is really
marginal, this is not the most obvious way or the most key way to
enter the Airbus Group," Fabrice Lievin, Airbus Vice President
for Industrial Globalization said on Tuesday.

"Getting a stake is not the best way; even the Polish government
understood it's not the best way. They themselves have to
construct (new state defense holding company) PGZ, to make some
rationalization," he told Reuters on the sidelines of the MSPO
Polish defense show.

"It's not what is at stake in the future, it's about Poland
restructuring its industry and us helping them. It can go many
ways, for example joint ventures - so there is a capital link,
but it's on a project to project basis. It (the shareholder
stake) could be a symbol, but it's not what is important."

Airbus Group is competing with Sikorsky of the United States, a
unit of United Technologies , and AgustaWestland, owned by
Italy's Finmeccanica for a deal to supply 70 military transport
helicopters.

It is the world's largest active military helicopter competition
and its value is estimated around $3 billion.

Airbus Helicopters is also expected to compete with rivals
including AgustaWestland and U.S. aerospace giant Boeing for a
further potential contract for 30 attack helicopters.

Poland is moving that purchase forward by two years as part of a
review of its army modernization program triggered by the crisis
in Ukraine, Polish deputy defense minister Czeslaw Mroczek told
Reuters last month.

The prospect of major purchases by a front-line NATO country that
maintains robust defense spending, in contrast with cutbacks in
many Western nations, has attracted foreign firms to the defense
show being held in central Poland until Sept 4.

Poland's finance ministry estimates the country will spend around
130 billion zlotys between 2013 and 2022 on modernizing its armed
forces.

Poland already spends 1.95 percent of its GDP on the army, one of
the highest rates of military spending.

Last year a senior Airbus Group official was as saying the
company wanted to "marry with Poland".

However, analysts say it faces hurdles including close defense
and security ties between Poland and the United States since the
end of the Cold War, as well as any potential fallout from a row
over French arms sales to Russia at a time of heightened tensions
between Moscow and the West over Ukraine.

Asked whether France's decision to pursue the sale of Mistral
warships to Russia had affected France-based Airbus's standing in
Poland, Lievin said the two issues were "totally unrelated", but
for Airbus "it would've been easier without it".